You guys. It finally got here. My Brambleberry order has arrived!
You might remember from my welcome video on YouTube that I recently fell into a rabbit hole of videos about soapmaking. One eensy weensy little recommended video on my front page, and all of a sudden I’m subscribing to soapers left and right and ordering instructional and recipe books. Well, I finally bit the bullet and ordered two cold process soapmaking kits from Brambleberry, and they have arrived!
I’m hoping to dedicate some time this weekend to actually making the soaps. I’m really excited to film the process for you because this will truly be a learn-along-with-me video. I’ve never tried a craft like this one before, so I hope I can give you an accurate idea of what it’s like for a total newbie just starting out.
I talk about this some in the video, but I want to emphasize again… if you, too, are wanting to experiment in soaping, do your research first! Making soap involves caustic (and extremely hot) chemicals, and safety precautions are a must! The Pure Soapmaking book by Anne-Marie Faiola does a great job of explaining the proper precautions. The other two books I mentioned in the video are The Everything Soapmaking Book by Alicia Grosso and The Soapmaker’s Companion by Susan Miller Cavitch.
I also highly recommend starting out with a kit rather than trying to buy ingredients and equipment separately. I ordered the two specific kits I did because 1) I think I’ll really like those two particular soaps, but 2) because together they got me about 90% of the equipment necessary to start out. As you can see in the video, the only other equipment I really needed to buy was mixing containers and a couple of spatulas.
The two I bought:
Natural Soap Kit for Beginners (available in lavender, lemongrass and orange)
Great soaping channels:
Soap Queen TV (Anne-Marie Faiola, CEO/Founder of Brambleberry)
Royalty Soaps (the channel that kicked off my new obsession)
Stay tuned for the upcoming soapmaking video! If you have any questions about the kits I purchased and the ingredients in them, let me know in the comments below!
